


i love you much (most beautiful darling)

by oyprongs



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Hogwarts, Marauders' Era, Post-Hogwarts, i did cry while writing the end though, i'm sad and i miss them and i'm deeply sorry for this piece of shit fic, i've been writing this for ages and ik its trash but you know what????
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-06
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2019-01-30 05:01:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12646614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oyprongs/pseuds/oyprongs
Summary: "There is something to be learned, Lily thinks, from first impressions."title from ee cummings





	i love you much (most beautiful darling)

There is something to be learned, Lily thinks, from first impressions.

She meets Marlene McKinnon and immediately knows from the curve of her smile and her welcoming words that there is a strength and kindness there. Mary Macdonald offers her a sugar quill and asks her almost a million excited questions, and Lily can tell it is indicative of her devoted and passionate heart. She knows Remus Lupin is kind-hearted and gentle when they first shake hands and he shares his notes with her, despite his questionable taste in mates. First impressions _do_ mean something, Lily believes, and she is nothing if not stubborn in her beliefs.

And yet sometimes, on particularly strange days or after particularly noteworthy events, she can be seen questioning some of those strongly held convictions. For instance, that of first impressions. Because, Lily remembers, she was quite repulsed by Severus Snape and his behavior the first day she met him, and yet they grew to be best friends. However, if she had kept her first impression of him in mind, she might have foreseen his descent into the Dark Arts. But the Severus Snape of now is not the Severus Snape of then, and sometimes people are multitudinous. And James Potter, who from the age of eleven Lily would swear was a plague to the entire Earth, and yet loved to surprise her in the smallest ways. So Lily tweaks her hypothesis the slightest, and she thinks instead that perhaps people – or the ideas one has of people, rather – are made up of infinite impressions over many years, and maybe first impressions aren’t the most important. Maybe it is the second impression, or the eighteenth, or the fiftieth, or maybe even the last. Maybe Lily is not quite as astute as she believes herself to be, and maybe the most surprising of people are the most significant.

* * *

The second he addresses her and Severus, Lily immediately dislikes James. He is cocky and rude and most of all, she hates the way Severus fumes as he speaks. Lily is not the kind to hate others. She believes in second chances and seeing the best in people. But she decides, right in that compartment of the Hogwarts Express, that she does not like the young boy with the Gryffindor pride and unruly black hair. Her stance is only strengthened by the immature ‘ooooh’ sound he makes and the horrible nickname he pens for Sev as she leads the latter out of the compartment and flashes James with a dirty look. No, she _really_ does not like him.

* * *

Lily, for all her efforts, just can’t seem to get this spell right. McGonagall wants them to complete it (turning a beetle into a button) successfully in their next class, but Lily is close to giving up as a few feeble sparks sputter from her wand after her most recent attempt. Other kids, _non-Muggleborn kids_ , in second year grew up around magic, practiced it, breathed it, and they have the logic, the background, etched into their minds. Lily heard some from Severus, and she reads up on each topic constantly in order to compensate for her upbringing, and she thinks she’s been doing well at school. Others consider her bright and talented, which has to mean something.

But once in awhile she discovers bumps along the way, and this is one of them. She was able to get the beetle she was practicing on to have half a plastic rear, but she had barely gotten further than that. She had spent hours in the common room desperately trying to make progress, surrounded by distracting chatter and the snapping fire by her back, and those stupid, stupid four boys sitting across from her lounging on the center couches and chairs. James was mussing up his hair and he and Sirius were laughing, loud and boisterous, at something Peter had just said, who was grinning proudly to himself. Remus sits on the chair beside them, a book laid open on his lap, but he clearly isn’t paying attention to it. James turns his head slightly from his lounging position and catches Lily’s eye unwittingly, but from the quirk of his lips into a smirk, he seems very pleased by the coincidence. Lily rolls her eyes and turns back to her work.

She’s mid-movement in her next attempt when she hears a voice behind her: “Need a hand, Evans?”

Lily sighs, letting her hand go limp to stop her undoubtedly soon-to-be-failed spell, and turns to see James, scrawny and shifting, hands stuffed in his pockets and a sure smirk stretching across his cheeks.

“No,” Lily, yet again, turns her back to him. “I’m perfectly capable, thank you very much. I don’t need help from _you_.” She makes sure to stress the last word and embed a poison into the syllable, and it’s harsh, maybe, but yesterday he jinxed Severus in the corridor and she doesn’t feel like being forgiving.

“If you insist,” James shrugs, and Lily ignores the disappointment apparent in his voice. She’s refocused her attention on the black, shining beetle again, now, but she’s interrupted once more before she can continue her practice.

“You have to tap it lightly and keep the wand on the beetle for a few seconds,” James says. “You’ll get it, though.” He shuffles away back to his friends.

Lily huffs, but not before picking her wand up again and tapping her beetle, following James’ instructions. In a moment, perfectly timed, the insect is replaced with a gleaming, metal button, the flames of the fire reflected in its dark surface. Lily smiles to herself, mentally thanking James for his help, because Merlin knows she would never say those words aloud to him. But when he sees Lily pack up her rucksack and head up the stairs to the girls’ dormitory, satisfyingly carrying a black button in her left hand, he gets the message.

* * *

The news of her father’s death hits her like a train at full-speed, with no warnings or recognition. She’s left devastated, lost among the blurs of her peers as she stands in their center, unable to keep time or process any construct of world order.

She escapes to some secluded corridor on the fifth floor and falls to the ground in shatters. He had been sick, but she thought he was getting better, so the news has still come as a surprise. Lily is left with nothing but her thoughts on the stone floor, the air thick with grief and ancient must, and her tears gather up dust as they travel down her hot cheeks. But she’s okay with the solitude, doesn’t mind processing her grief silently and inwardly. She doesn’t want to confide in friends now, and be subject to pitying brows and awkward platitudes.

Lily sits bathed in the quiet for another minute, knees pulled to her chest, until she hears footsteps tapping around the corner. She can’t be bothered to lift her head when they halt next to her, but she has a subtle inclination huddled in the back of her mind that it might be _him_.

Her guess is confirmed when he slides down the wall next to her, keeping a safe distance, however, and simply states, “I saw you run out of the Great Hall.”

What strikes her about his sentence is that he offers no other explanation and asks for none either. His reason for being here is as uncomplicated as watching her leave breakfast visibly upset, and it’s because of this that she raises her head, pushes the fallen strands of hair from her eyes, and tells him: “My father died.”

She glances at James, and he’s already looking at her with an unexpected kindness, his hand tapping a disjointed rhythm on his knee. He isn’t expectant of anything it seems, eyes patient on her as if he were waiting for a December frost to melt, so she continues. “It wasn’t sudden, but it was still…” Lily takes a deep breath, “surprising.” Tears are still flowing from her eyes in fat beads, as if unstoppable, automatic, and she makes no motion to wipe them away. “You don’t have to stay here with me, Potter.”

“I know.” He pauses. “I’ll go if you want me to.”

It had been nice, for lack of a better word, to tell someone, but Lily has never felt more exhausted. She nods in response.

James stands up, wiping his hands on his trousers. He has grown much taller, Lily notices, in the last four years. He has not yet grown into his tall frame, all lanky bones and narrow shoulders, but she realizes he looks vaguely unrecognizable from the gap-toothed, sunny-eyed boy she first met.

He rocks a bit on his heels before saying, “Do you want me to get someone? Marlene, maybe, or Snape?” He says the last word thickly, like he can barely form the sound with his tongue, but she appreciates his effort.

“No, I’d like to be alone.”

“Right,” James nods, runs a hand through his unruly hair. It seems as if he’s about to turn away, but he stops and faces her again, and he gives a bashful bow of his head. Through her swollen, glassy eyes, Lily thinks she sees his ears flushing red like summer. “I’m really sorry about your dad. Sometimes people leave us too soon.”

She can’t quite think of anything to say, her heart a little too caught by surprise, and the words she thinks are appropriate in this situation sit frozen, rusting in her throat. James merely gives another jerky nod and slides in a half-circle, boots scuffing against the floor, and walks away.

When Lily is sure he’s gone, her throat loosens up, and as soft and low as the patter of rain against glass, she says, “Thanks.”

* * *

Lily is infuriatingly helpless to stop Mary’s shaking in her arms, rattling the plush couch and her own bones with her movements. She would give anything to just kill Mulciber right now.

James enters the Common Room as Mary lets out another shaky sob, his hands balancing a cup of tea filled to the brim. He crosses the room and offers it to Mary, giving her a reassuring smile before sitting on the table. “Mary, can you – can you tell me what happened?” James asks, cautious.

Mary nods, fingers clutched white against the cup. She sniffs before speaking, her voice trembling with the words. “I – I was walking along the fifth floor corridor…”

Lily has heard the story from Marlene already, and she glances at James once Mary arrives at the crux of the story: Mulciber cursing her in the middle of the hall. Lily can tell James is angry by his fists bundled in his lap and his tense, locked jaw. He is trying desperately to conceal it, Lily thinks, the way they all are, for Mary’s sake, nodding along with Mary’s story so as to encourage her. When she chokes up, Lily rubs her back and reaches out to grab her hand, but James beats her to it, his thumb kneading circles against her skin.

Lily is struck by the careful way in which he holds himself and others in moments like these. Moments when Lily is completely disillusioned with the cruel emptiness of the world, but James – and Lily thinks they share this in common – puts that aside for his friends. She, for lack of a better word, admires him for that.

Mary lets out another shaky sob, so Lily pulls her tighter into her arms. James is watching them, jaw looser now and eyes weighed down with a tragic gloom. She catches his eye, and in a moment of spontaneity, the corners of her mouth tick up into a smile.

James is taken aback at first, but he returns the gesture nonetheless. Lily gives him an expression she hopes conveys that she can handle it from here, and James gets the message, standing up from the table and saluting her before heading up the stairs to the boys’ dormitory.

She thinks she might actually like this version of James Potter: quietly heroic and kind and keen for justice. Lily thinks this could be progress.

* * *

“So, Evans,” James approaches her, butterbeer in hand and a carefree grin on his lips. “Enjoying the party?”

Lily faces him, arms crossed in an attempt to look displeased. “Greatly,” she deadpans.

“You say that sarcastically, but I know you’re having fun,” James says, taking a swig from his bottle. “You’re just as pleased as the rest of us about our fantastic win today.”

“You could not be more arrogant,” Lily says with a saccharine smile.

James just laughs, unperturbed, and tugs a hand through his hair.

“Would you stop?” Lily rolls her eyes at the movement, but not without mirth. A year ago the action would have irritated her to no end, but now, it’s almost endearing. She’ll never admit it to him, though. “You’re just making it worse.”

“I decided a long time ago to embrace the chaos, Evans,” James shrugs.

“I’d think James _Fleamont_ Potter would be able to tame the disordered mess attached to his head.”

“Why do you think my father created the potion in the first place?”

Lily’s eyebrows rise up to her hairline. “You’re kidding.”

James shakes his head, smirking. “My dad made it to try fix my hair for family occasions and all that. I won’t touch the stuff now, though.”

“You could use it, you know,” Lily says.

“Nah, the hair is imperative to my good looks,” he quips.

Lily has to silently agree, but she just rolls her eyes. She peers up at him now, notices the crinkles around his eyes and the upturned tick of his lips, thinks about his wry comments and actually clever pranks, and finds herself not minding any of it. She isn’t sure when she and James became – friends isn’t quite the right word – _friendly_. It was somewhere along the line this year, when she realized he was not the same boy she’d known from first, or even fifth, year. There is something distinctly changed about him, something that Lily might even label as maturity. Like the James she remembers from years past rusted over in the summer’s forgetful fog, and he came back after months of disuse, only to discover he was not quite what he had been. Or maybe it is not so complicated, and people just grow up.

James interrupts her thoughts: “Well, I’ll leave you to feign disapproval of the party, Evans. Don’t have too little fun without me.”

He grins one last time, turning away to join his friends on the other side of the room, leaving Lily to contemplate when and how exactly James had become so wonderfully tolerable.

* * *

She still can’t quite believe that the Head Boy sitting across from her now working on patrol schedules is James Potter. Every so often Lily looks up from her own papers to study him - only for a second, of course and only because she’s just a bit in shock - as he chews on his bottom lip and scribbles a note in his margins about someone’s conflict. She had had months to process it since he had written to her over the summer and made many self-deprecating comments about how undeserving he is. She couldn't say she disagreed with him at the time, but she is becoming less and less certain of that. He cracks some joke about how much work scheduling rounds are at one point, and she thinks he has a nice laugh: full and bright. His grin takes up the whole expanse of his face. She looks back down at her paper the second he makes eye contact with her. She is _not_ staring.

But she does note that _he_ had made the plans to work that night - like he is actually prepared for the work the Head position required - and he is surprisingly adept at pairing people together and working around everyone’s schedules. Lily can maybe understand Dumbledore’s logic for giving James the job. He has a certain commanding air about him, as if one word from him made you enraptured by every next thing he had to say - not that Lily is, of course. She is merely making an observation.

“Lily?” James had snapped her out of her reverie, and Lily realizes he had asked her a question and she is merely staring at him unawares.

“Sorry,” she shakes her head. “What was that?”

“I said, would you like a sugar quill?” He repeats, his lips quirking upwards at her as he nods to the aforementioned candy in his extended hand.

“Oh, right, sure.” She takes the offered quill and smiles. “Thanks.”

James nods, pushing his glasses up with one hand and returning to his paper. Lily forces herself to do the same and tries to ignore the soft stirring in her stomach as she takes in his hazel eyes, his stupid messy hair, and the ghost of a smirk on his lips. It is, after all, only James Potter.

* * *

Lily is never sure of what makes her do it in that moment, only that she can’t do anything _but_. He stands there in front of her, his face half glowing in the low lamplight, gazing at her with what she thinks is deep affection and it is really no different than any other night between the two of them. They are alone in the Common Room, as they often are after they’ve stayed up talking, and he’s walked her to the stairs, hands stuffed in his pockets, hers tucked behind her back. She’s made some joke about his being a gentleman, and he’s offered some quick reply about how he was raised, and at some point she’s turned toward him, her head tilted upwards and, like every other night, everything in her is screaming to step up on her toes and pull him in. But unlike every other night, she doesn’t ignore it this time.

When their lips make contact she is both acutely aware of every touch from him and completely oblivious. Her hands are clutched around his neck and his - after the shock wears off - quickly move to wrap around her waist, but she can’t quite focus on anything but his warm lips moving against hers, heated, slow, and so, so relieved because she’s _kissing_ James Potter.

She thinks this was inevitable. She _knows_ her fifth-year self would never guess this turn of events but it was always, always inevitable. _They_ were inevitable. She thinks, _this is fate_. She thinks, _this is right_. She thinks, _this is what love feels like_.

* * *

 There is only silence and even breathing between them as they lie on their sides facing each other, enclosed in James’ bed canopy. They are connected by sight, by the rhythm of their veins, and Lily stares at him, memorizes the curl of his hair like black silk, and an individual freckle on his cheek. Sometimes she moves her line of vision to inspect their entwined fingers, suspended above them, twisting in time to the twilight. She watches him trace love letters into her palms, like he’ll forget whole passages if he doesn’t inscribe them into her skin, leave a permanence of inkless touch.

Everything about the gentle flutter of his lips, his fingers across her tendons, like a butterfly’s wing pressing imprints of kisses in its wake, whispers promises of protection. Lily exhales, and James cups her cheek in his hand, his thumb grazing the outline of her ear. James smiles at her and says, voice rough, “You are all sorts of lovely, Lily Evans.”

He leans forward, kisses her soft as mourning doves, and then pulls away too quickly. It could last for decades and he would pull away too quickly. Lily has never felt something quite like this before.

* * *

 Everything seems hopeless in February, as the dreary day opens to cast mourning upon them in little black typewriter letters: _22 Dead in Brussels Attack._ Lily can barely see through the haze fogging her eyes when she reads those words, weighing down upon her ribs like solid brick, and she goes to hide behind the maroon curtains surrounding her bed. She stares at them, sees blood-red.

James finds her easily, - she knew he would - attuned to the steps she’s taken a minute before his, to the tears he feels welling behind his eyes and hers, floodgates breaking in the center of their connected hearts. He parts the fabric to see her cold and stiff, hands clasped in her lap in an empty prayer. He kneels across from her and she aches for him to make her feel something sweeter than the dust accumulating in her lungs, to understand something better than the black holes she can’t see through. She silently pleads with him to tell her this war is a dream, and she’ll wake up to a dewy morning and plum-colored hummingbirds, musing about the wonders of her subconscious. She knows he can’t do quite that, but when he takes her into his hands she turns from marble and stone into something softer, simpler, like he’s reduced her to her elements, and she is once again the basis of creation, no longer confined by tragedy.

* * *

There could not possibly be more shock or despair building inside of her in this moment as she stares at the four different methods she had used in front of her, each displaying the same information, the same verdict. Her heart is pounding like it never has before and she blinks over and over hoping to see something different. This is the worst timing for this to happen - they are in the middle of a _war_. They were supposed to have years to plan, to try for, to raise children. They were supposed to have their family and think of nothing but love when it came to them, to host joyful, festive Christmas and birthday parties where all their friends would come. They were supposed to be able to take their children to the park, or to school, to not be constantly on the lookout. They were supposed to have their beautiful, loving family when they _could_ , when they were ready - that is, if they could even make it out alive.

Lily dizzies herself with these thoughts as she sits slumped on the bathroom tile, and she almost doesn't hear the front door open and close and the familiar shuffle of James slipping his shoes and coat off.

“Lil?”

She can’t even make herself answer him. Any words she can think of are cut off, choked in her throat. She tries not to feel burdened by the possibilities of how he might react. The footsteps are closer now, and she closes her eyes and takes as deep a breath as she can as the door opens, creaking hesitantly.

“Lil?” James starts. “What’s wrong? What’s all this?”

Lily takes a deep, shaky breath and raises her eyes to meet his, then moves her gaze to the assortment of Muggle and Wizarding pregnancy tests.

James furrows his brow, taking a step closer to Lily’s curled-up body. “Is this-”

“-I’m pregnant,” Lily blurts out. She looks at him again. “Pregnant, James.”

James just continues staring at her, wide-eyed. “Are-are you sure?”

She gives him an exasperated look, one he’s been on the receiving end of many times before.

“Right,” he nods. After a moment, seemingly coming out of his stupor, he rushes to sit on the floor next to Lily, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and pulling her close. She feels her eyes burn with tears at the gesture.

“What are we going to do, James?” she sobs. “We’re in the middle of a _war_. How are we supposed to...how are we going to raise a child?”

He grips her shoulders tighter, kisses her temple, and presses his thumb to wipe away a tear that has settled on her flushed cheek. “We’ll figure it out. We’ll figure it out,” he repeats.

When he says it with such vigor, such conviction, she breathes a little easier, like she can almost believe him. When James says he can do something, no one questions him. He has that effect on people, Lily reflects. She used to be immune to it - at least, as immune as one could be to James Potter’s confidence - years ago, but she’s fallen prone to his easy assurances and cocky air that both infuriates those on the receiving end of it and calms them down.

“We’ll figure it out,” he says again, his hand trailing up and down her arm in a focused pattern. “It’s us.”

 _Us._ Lily repeats it in her head like a mantra. _Us. James and Lily. Lily and James. Us. Us. Us._ She nods in response to James’s words, then lifts her head up to meet his gaze. As their eyes make contact, his lips break into a wide, beaming smile.

“You’re pregnant,” he whispers, so quiet she can only hear him because of their close proximity, his breath almost tickling her nose. Lily returns his smile, pushing her fear down to make way for the burst of happiness that has been hiding for the past thirty minutes. “I’m pregnant.”

* * *

When she hears the thud of his body hitting the ground, she can’t process the reality of it. In her mind he is still alive: still messing up his hair by the lake, still kissing her with peach syrup lips and tucking a sunflower behind her ear while he holds her hand on the street. He is still pulling her close in the night when the thunder sounds outside and she starts for a millisecond, terrified that the noise is indicative of something much more menacing than the weather. He is still conjuring colored smoke downstairs, laughing and content and _alive_ , and Harry is not in her arms right now, and she is not hidden upstairs, seconds away from begging for her life. He is still saying the words, “Lily, take Harry and go! It’s him! Go! Run! I’ll hold him off!” He is still James. He is still saving her.

But she can hear Voldemort’s footsteps on her stairs as he inches closer to the door and she wants to go back to eighteen, seventeen, sixteen, back to all the years she knew James and kiss him in every second of them, hold him for every eternity, and sit in every moment she has spent with him, and Harry, and love him all over again (and sometimes for the first time) in all of them. She stares at the door, clutching Harry closer to her chest, and in a desperate attempt to make James hear her - anywhere, everywhere - she whispers (soft and sure and with all of the adoration and affection she had held back for years, because she had held so much back), _Thank you. Thank you. Thank you._ She thanks James, and she thanks Harry, she thanks herself, and she thanks every power she can think of that she didn’t stick with a certain first impression. And then the door opens.

**Author's Note:**

> i depressed myself. you can find me on tumblr @oyprongs. love and affection always


End file.
